Highfield: MSN Video to be available after Christmas

Highfield: MSN Video to be available after Christmas

MSN Video, Microsoft's long-form video platform, will come out of its testing phase and be fully available to consumers after Christmas.

Ashley Highfield, Microsoft's managing director and vice- president consumer and online, UK, said he planned a full rollout of MSN Video after Christmas, in response to "a real demand for MSN Video from agencies and advertisers". He said MSN Video would start to capture consumer data to create bespoke ad campaigns in the future.

Speaking at the IAB Engage event in London, he said: "We're starting to get exclusives to pull in an audience. We then cookie the audience, package up the audience data and give it back to the agency, to give to the client, to make a bespoke campaign for users in the future."

Highfield said online video was still a nascent market, but it was an area Microsoft was committed to and which could create "a large amount of online inventory on the web. Spot advertising on video is more likely to produce recall."